After watching season one of the Netflix series, The Crown, one would think that Peter Morgan, the creator of the show, must hold Queen Elizabeth in very high esteem, but that’s not quite right. And Morgan says he is no Monarchist either. But it’s not that Morgan thinks Queen Elizabeth is a bad person, but he thinks she’s well, simple. Perhaps, while breaking down the Monarch’s life for a six-part series, Peter Morgan decided he figured out Queen Elizabeth.

Season two of the Netflix series, The Crown, returns next month with most of the original cast from The Crown season one. The two main actors, Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth and Matt Smith as Prince Philip, will return for season two of the tale of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but Peter Morgan has announced that he will replace Foy and Smith for The Crown season three.

And both Claire Foy and Matt Smith knew that they would age out of the role, and they have no ill will for the project or Peter Morgan. Foy recently talked about it on the Graham Norton Show.

“This is the last stint. It’s over, I’m done. I always knew it was only going to be two series and then the part would be reincarnated and someone else takes over. That’s the nature of the part.”

In a recent interview about his subject, Queen Elizabeth, Peter Morgan was quite candid, saying that the Queen is an everyday woman in an extraordinary circumstance. In fact, Morgan was quite honest about Queen Elizabeth and her intellect.

“[Queen Elizabeth is] a countryside woman of limited intelligence.”

Morgan firmly believes that the Queen “would have much preferred looking after her dogs and breeding horses to being Queen.” And even the first season of The Crown showed the young Queen Elizabeth always making time for her horses and the breeding program and living with Welsh Corgis at her feet.

But Morgan says that part of his respect for Queen Elizabeth is respect for the actual institution that has outlasted many of Europe’s other monarchies.

“They’re survival organisms, like a mutating virus.”

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Peter Morgan continues saying that part of his fascination with the reign of Queen Elizabeth isn’t really about the woman, but about the position that has endured. Queen Elizabeth is England’s longest reigning monarch, and she has put duty before everything and everyone in order to keep the monarchy alive.

Morgan says you have to give Queen Elizabeth credit. While Prime Ministers have come and gone, she’s still here.

“Look at how many prime ministers are wheeled out in coffins, on stretchers, having made fools of themselves: Downing Street is full of sick people. And yet She survives. It is clearly a deranged institution and a completely insane system, but perhaps it’s the insanity that makes it work.”

Morgan continues by saying that he is as confused as anyone as to how he ended up creating a six-part series for Netflix based on a “countryside woman,” but there is interest, and in a way, The Crown is humanizing Queen Elizabeth.

Are you surprised that the creator of The Crown, Peter Morgan, was so candid about Queen Elizabeth, saying that her intelligence is limited?